Tribe of Mentors

Short Life Advice From The Best In The World
Timothy Ferriss
20171121

The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes. — Marcel Proust

About This Book

When Facing Life’s Questions Who Do You Turn To For Advice?

Four-time #1 bestselling author and podcast giant Tim Ferriss has tracked down more than 100 eclectic mentors to help him, and you, navigate life. Through short, action-packed profiles, he shares their secrets for success, happiness, and meaning. No matter the challenge or opportunity, something in these pages can help.

Introduction

Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. After all, conscious thinking is largely asking and answering questions in your own head. If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions. If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions.

Fortunately, this is a skill you can develop. No book can give you all of the answers, but this book can train you to ask better questions. Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has said that “The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.” Substitute “master learner” for “novel,” and you have my philosophy of life. Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.

The 11 questions I chose for this book are listed below. It’s important to read the full questions and explanations, as I shorten them throughout the rest of the book. Let’s take a look at each, and I’ll explain why they appear to work. My explanations get shorter toward the end, as many of the points carry over or apply to all questions.

1. What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

“What’s your favorite book?” seems like a good question. So innocent, so simple. In practice, it’s terrible. The people I interview have read hundreds or thousands of books, so it’s a labor-intensive question for them, and they rightly worry about picking a “favorite,” which then gets quoted and put in articles, Wikipedia, etc. “Most gifted” is lower risk, an easier search query (easier to recall), and implies benefits for a broader spectrum of people, which the idiosyncratic “favorite” does not.

For the curious and impatient among you, here are a few books (of many) that came up a lot:

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger

2. What purchase of $100 or less has most impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My fans love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc.

This might seem like a throwaway, but it isn’t. It provides an easy entry point for busy interviewees while providing readers with something immediately actionable. The deeper questions elicit more profound answers, but profundity is the fiber of knowledge—it requires intensive digestion. To keep marching forward in the meanwhile, humans (yours truly included) need short-term rewards. In this book, I accomplish that with questions that provide tangible, easy, and often fun answers—Scooby snacks for your hard-working soul. To get the heavier lifting done, these breathers are important.

3. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

This one is particularly important to me. As I wrote in Tools of Titans:

The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, elite athletes, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who’ve maximized one or two strengths. Humans are imperfect creatures. You don’t “succeed” because you have no weaknesses; you succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them…. Everyone is fighting a battle [and has fought battles] you know nothing about. The heroes in this book are no different. Everyone struggles.

4. If you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?)

Self-explanatory, so I’ll skip the commentary. For would-be interviewers, though, the “If helpful …” portion is often critical for getting good answers.

5. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)

This is also self-explanatory … or so it seems. With questions like this and the next, I’ve found it productive to give interviewees a real-world answer. In a live interview, it buys them time to think, and in text, it gives them a template. For this question, for instance, I gave everyone the following:

SAMPLE ANSWER from Amelia Boone, one of the world’s top endurance athletes, sponsored by big brands and 4x world champion in obstacle course racing (OCR):
“In 2011, I shelled out $450 to participate in the first World’s Toughest Mudder, a brand new 24-hour obstacle race. Saddled with law school debt, it was a big expenditure for me, and I had no business thinking I could even complete the race, let alone compete in it. But I ended up being one of 11 finishers (out of 1,000 participants) of that race, and it altered the course of my life, leading to my career in obstacle racing and multiple world championships. Had I not plunked down the cash for that entry fee, none of that would have happened.”

6. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

I was first asked this when interviewed by my friend Chris Young, scientist, co-author of Modernist Cuisine, and CEO of ChefSteps (search “Joule sous vide”). Before responding, and while sitting onstage at the Town Hall in Seattle, I said, “Oooooh… that’s a good question. I’m going to steal that.” And I did. This question has deeper implications than you might expect. Answers prove a number of helpful things: 1) Everyone is crazy, so you’re not alone. 2) If you want more OCD-like behaviors, my interviewees are happy to help, and 3) Corollary to #1: “Normal” people are just crazy people you don’t know well enough. If you think you’re uniquely neurotic, I hate to deliver the news, but every human is Woody Allen in some part of life. Here’s the sample answer I gave for this question, taken from a live interview and slightly edited for text:

SAMPLE ANSWER from Cheryl Strayed, best-selling author of Wild (made into a feature film with Reese Witherspoon): “Here’s my whole theory of the sandwich … every bite should be as much like the previous bite as possible. Do you follow? [If] there’s a clump of tomatoes here, but then there’s hummus—everything has to be as uniform as possible. So any sandwich I’m ever given, I open it up and I immediately completely rearrange the sandwich.”

7. In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

This is short, effective, and not particularly nuanced. It has particular application to my midlife reassessment. I’m surprised I don’t hear questions like this more often.

8. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?

The second “ignore” sub-question is essential. We’re prone to asking, “What should I do?” but less prone to asking “What shouldn’t I do?” Since what we don’t do determines what we can do, I like asking about not-to-do lists.

9. What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?

A close cousin of the previous question. Many problems of “focusing” are best solved by defining what to ignore.

10. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?

Saying yes is easy. Saying no is hard. I wanted help with the latter, as did many people in the book, and some answers really delivered the goods.

11. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)

If your mind is “beach balling” (nerdy Mac reference to when a computer freezes), nothing else matters much until that is resolved. Once again, the secondary “if helpful” question is often critical.

– – –

Since any greatness in this book is from other people, I feel comfortable saying that, no matter where you are in life, you will love some of what’s here. In the same breath, no matter how much I cry and pout, you will find some of what’s inside boring, useless, or seemingly stupid. Out of roughly 140 profiles, I expect you to like 70, love 35, and have your life changed by perhaps 17. Amusingly, the 70 you dislike will be precisely the 70 someone else needs.

Life would be boring if we all followed exactly the same rules, and you will want to pick and choose.

The more surprising part of all of this is … Tribe of Mentors changes with you. As time passes and life unfolds, things you initially swatted away like a distraction can reveal depth and become unimaginably important.

That cliche you ignored like a throwaway fortune cookie? Suddenly it makes sense and moves mountains. Conversely, things you initially found enlightening might run their course, like a wonderful high school coach who needs to hand you off to a college coach for you to reach the next level.

There’s no expiration date on the advice in this book, as there’s no uniformity. In the following pages, you’ll find advice from 30-something wunderkinds and seasoned veterans in their 60s and 70s. The hope is that, each time you pick up this book, not unlike with the I Ching or Tao Te Ching, something new will grab you, shake your perception of reality, illuminate your follies, confirm your intuitions, or correct your course that all-important one degree.

The entire spectrum of human emotion and experience can be found in this book, from hilarious to heart-wrenching, from failure to success, and from life to death. May you welcome it all.

On my coffee table at home, I have a piece of driftwood. Its sole purpose is to display a quote by Anaïs Nin, which I see every day:

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.“

It’s a short reminder that success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have, and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take.

The most fulfilled and effective people I know—world-famous creatives, billionaires, thought leaders, and more—look at their life’s journey as perhaps 25 percent finding themselves and 75 percent creating themselves.

This book is not intended to be a passive experience. It’s intended to be a call to action.

You are the author of your own life, and it’s never too late to replace the stories you tell yourself and the world. It’s never too late to begin a new chapter, add a surprise twist, or change genres entirely.

Contents